Rochelle held a ribbon cutting Tuesday, June 9, for the completion of recent upgrades to its Rochelle Municipal Utilities wastewater treatment plant at 888 Elliott Way.

The total cost of the project, which began in 2024, was nearly $12 million. The project involved converting half of the plant’s treatment process to biological nutrient removal for removing phosphorus. Phosphorus will be regulated by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency starting in 2030, and it can be removed biologically or chemically.

Other recent improvements included rehabbing excess flow lagoons that handle water that exceeds capacity of the plant in rain events and high-flow times, and upgrading filters.

“It completed some critical needs for the plant that will last for the next 20 years,” RMU Superintendent of Water/Water Reclamation Adam Lanning said. “We used to have sand filters. We upgraded to a new system that takes out a lot more suspended solids and filters a lot more water than we were able to in the past. We increased our capacity to treat water by about a million gallons per day. We made some biological nutrient removal upgrades.”

The first phase of the upgrades wrapped up in 2021 and cost $7.4 million. That phase included upgrading headworks equipment, converting aeration to biological phosphorus removal, upgrading the anaerobic lagoon, adding an office administration building and the conversion of the plant’s lab.

Lanning said the plant is in compliance with the environmental protection agency each year. RMU recently started land applying sludge produced by the plant on farm fields instead of taking it to the landfill.

“We’re saving money and it’s better for the environment,” Lanning said. “We recently started doing fish surveys to assess the health of the stream. We want to do the best we can for the environment.”

RMU also has plans to add chemical phosphorus removal to the wastewater treatment plant to ensure it meets future phosphorus limits. Lanning hopes to see the chemical phosphorus removal addition completed by summer 2027, which would give RMU two years to perfect the process before the 2030 deadline. He anticipates those improvements will cost $1 million to $2 million.

RMU’s wastewater treatment plant was built in the 1990s. It has seen about $20 million in investment in recent years, with replacement of almost all mechanical components.

Rochelle Mayor John Bearrows said the completion of the recent upgrades represents the city’s commitment to residents and the environment for generations to come.

“The end result of this project is that what flows in the Kyte Creek is well within the means of what it needs to be to be safe for the environment,” Bearrows said. “On behalf of the city, we thank Adam and his staff for their work on this. The treatment plant is one of those places that maybe isn’t thought about a whole lot. But it’s very needed for our community. Today represents a great upgrade for the next several decades.”